I feel like it goes without saying that the Gunnison Valley is a hard place to grow. With a 90 day growing season, mid summer frosts that can hit us any time of the year, and the hot high altitude sun, gardening here can sometimes feel impossible. But none the less we plant on, and are actually able to grow some things. Given the difficulty of this endeavor, it is important that we make the most out of our growing spaces for the short growing season. One of the best ways to do this is with succession planting.
Putting it simply, succession planting is when you plant something in your garden in the same spot that you just harvested something from. The main perk of succession planting is it will allow you to harvest from your garden for the entire growing season as opposed to a few big harvests. Succession planting is common place for anyone growing food commercially. Because of this, I reached out to the Mountain Roots farm team to learn a little bit about what we do for succession planting at our farm.
Tip 1 Germination rates and days to maturity
As soon as I posed this question to them, Lexi, our Sustainable Agriculture Lead immediately told me to look at germination rates, and days to maturity to see if doing a succession planting is viable. For example, radishes (depending on the variety) can mature in as little as 3 weeks. So in theory you could harvest three to four rounds of radishes from the same bed throughout the season. In contrast, broccoli can take 50-80 days to mature (starting from a trans plant) making it not a viable option for succession planting here in the valley. Checking the days to maturity of the plants in your garden will let you know what plants you can get second crops out of, and mixing what was planted there can help you make sure that the nutrients of your soil are not depleted, and can help smooth out the gaps in your days to maturity.
Tip 2 staggered plants
One common problem with home gardens is that your harvest can feel like a feast or famine situation, where nothing is ready for a while, they you turn around and have more kale than you know what to do with. One solution to this could be another technique of succession planting, which is staggering your planting. The practice of staggering your planting is a simple one. Instead of simply planting all of your seeds at one time, you plant some of them every week. This way your harvests will be staggered by a week. Your harvests can be as staggered as you would like them to be. For any lettuces or arugula, I would recommend having two sections going a week apart. This way you can go in and do a haircut-style harvest on one section a week since it takes two weeks for these greens to bounce back after this type of harvest.
Tip 3. Over Wintering.
Over wintering plant can be difficult in the Gunnison Valley, but it is possible. Looking at what plants you are wanting to over winter can help you plan your beds for the next season. For example if you over winter garlic, it will be ready to harvest in late July early August. This gives you a small window for growing either some baby greens or radishes in the same bed that you pull the garlic out of.
Tip 4 Cover crop.
Cover crops are crops that are planted but not intended to be harvested. Cover crops have a variety of benefits including, water retention, soil nutrition, compost filler, and reduce pests, and weeds. There are a variety of plants that work as cover crops. One of the best cover crops though is legumes. Legumes are a great cover crop because of the nutrients that they bring back into the soil. Lexi informed me that she always plants garden peas in her garden in late summer/fall and lets them over winter. When she is ready for planting in the beds in the spring she just tills the peas straight into the garden soil with some compost. She recommended that every person utilize cover crops in their garden to help with the soil nutrients.
Succession cropping is something that is easy to do and implement into your garden, but it does require some planning. Juggling the days to maturity with all the plants in your garden can be difficult to do without a garden spreadsheet or a map. Here is an example of something that we used at our farm to help plan our planting. Like most plans though, it changed a bit through the season depending on weather and temperature. This element of succession planting is very personal depending on your organizations style, but I would recommend that you do something for tracking this to help maximize your harvests, or if your the kind of person to just wing it, then look at your days to maturity and go for it. But whatever your approach is, I would recommend doing something for succession planting in order to maximize your harvests throughout the season.